Abstract:
This mixed study evaluated the professional teaching of chemistry through learners’ perspective against the criteria of B.Ed at public secondary schools in Pakistan regarding eight aspects: general professional teaching skills, lesson planning, teaching methods, audio-visual aids, students’ classroom activities and formative assessment, and course coverage of theory and practical. I collected quantitative data through self-developed questionnaire of 70 items using stratified sampling of 350 students from boys-only, girls only, boys in co-education, and girls in co-education across rural and urban schools; however, qualitative data involved 20 students’ semi-structured interviews. A panel of experts and pilot testing refined the tools. The overall Coronbach’s alpha stood at 0.9 and 0.8 for professional teaching and test-items respectively. Descriptive statistics, multiple regression, correlation, independent samples t-test, and ANOVA analyses revealed the failure of existing professional teaching of chemistry. The qualitative thematic analyses and triangulation confirmed it: Dictation of questions and answers as dominant teaching method, and constantly locked science laboratories and equipments emerged as the major themes. Laboratory experimentation, audio-visual aids, chemistry theory, and teaching methods strongly predicted students’ test-scores with 41.7% surety. However, demographic variables: Students’ favorite subject, home study, parents’ income, and students’ gender weakly predicted learners’ test-scores. Independent samples t-test and ANOVA analyses revealed that
EVALUATION OF TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY 2
students devoting more time to home-study and tuition, especially in natural sciences, and students’ from separate schools for gender, and parents with higher earning and rank got significantly different test-scores; however, gender and parents’ education had no significant differences. I presented feasible and realistic recommendations to the concerned stakeholders.
Key words: evaluation, chemistry, professional training, teaching, secondary schools
